2013 in Review: As Governments in the Arab World Crack Down, Activists Fight Back

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

The uprisings of 2011 gave hope to many for a new era of Internet governance. While Tunisia made concrete steps toward a freer Internet, many governments throughout the region have grappled with finding a balance between instituting the harsh restrictions that helped create Tunisia's uprising and implementing enough control to prevent their own. In 2013, many governments tended toward the former, implementing censorship for the first time or arresting bloggers, creating a deterrent for those who might dare speak their minds. Here are a few of the threats we've tracked this year and the ways in which activists have fought back.

Censorship on the rise

By far, the biggest surprise this year occurred in Jordan, where a Press and Publications Law created in 2012 resulted in the censorship of more than 300 websites this June. Local news websites that failed or refused to obtain a license under the new law were subsequently blocked, along with a handful of foreign websites that had not been subject to the law in the first place. We've also seen efforts by the governments of Egypt and Morocco to increase censorship.

Perhaps the most disheartening trend is the increase that we've seen in arrests of individuals exercising their right to free speech. The recent case of Shezanne Casim, a United States citizen detained in the UAE for posting a satirical video to YouTube, is only one of many in the tiny Gulf country. In Morocco, Ali Anouzla's case has brought international attention to the country's repression of journalists. In neighboring Kuwait, dozens have faced charges of blasphemy for content posted on social networks. And the list goes on.

We've ramped up our efforts to track and advocate for such cases and will continue to do so in 2014.

Surveillance run amok

The revelations brought to the world by Edward Snowden about the NSA's spying did not go missed in the Arab world. With Jordan and Egypt close to the top of the list of the countries most spied on, activists are rightfully angry and have joined the global effort to stop mass surveillance. Amongst the signatories to the 13 Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance are more than a dozen organizations from the region, including the Arab Digital Expression Foundation, Nawaat, MADA Palestine, and Lakome.org.

Some countries in the region have taken the news about the NSA as a cue to conduct their own spying. While Tunisia's hosting of the Freedom Online Coalition conference in June seemed like good news, the government has since created a new agency that seems to have the mandate to bring surveillance back to the country. And localized surveillance remains a threat in most of the region.

The good news

Recognizing the scope of these threats, EFF teamed up this year with 7iber.com, Access, Global Voices Advocacy, and SMEX to create Digital Citizen, a monthly review of digital rights in the Arab World. We've ramped up our programs, and in early 2014 are partnering with Global Voices to host the fourth Arabloggers meeting in Amman, where we will conduct security and policy training and meet with our allies and fellow travelers from throughout the region. We are also working to support several new groups in countries where their presence is much-needed.

Our allies in the Arab world have continued to inspire us in 2013 and will undoubtedly do so long into the future!

This article is part of our 2013 Year in Review series; read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2013.

Related Updates

New York, New York—President Donald Trump's blocking of people on Twitter because they criticize him violates the First Amendment, a federal judge in New York ruled today in a resounding victory for freedom of speech and the public’s right to communicate opposing political views directly to elected officials and...

Houston, Texas—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued Texas A&M University on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for blocking comments on its official Facebook page that mention PETA by name or use certain words to criticize the university’s use of dogs in muscular dystrophy experiments. The...

Washington, D.C.-On Monday, May 14, at 9:30 am, EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry will argue in court that the public has a right to access, copy, and share the law—and industry groups that helped develop certain legal rules can't inhibit that right by claiming ownership in those rules. EFF represents...

Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on Facebook, Google, and other social media companies today to publicly report how many user posts they take down, provide users with detailed explanations about takedowns, and implement appeals policies to boost accountability. EFF, ACLU of Northern California, Center for Democracy & Technology...

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on “The Filtering Practices of Social Media Platforms” on April 26. Public attention to this issue is important: calls for online platform owners to police their members’ speech more heavily inevitably lead to legitimate voices being silenced online. Here’s a quick...

A New Hampshire state court has dismissed a defamation suit filed by a patent owner unhappy that it had been called a “patent troll.” The court ruled [PDF] that the phrase “patent troll” and other rhetorical characterizations are not the type of factual statements that can be the basis...

Yesterday and today, Mark Zuckerberg finallytestified before the Senate and House, facing Congress for the first time to discuss data privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As we predicted, Congress didn’t stick to Cambridge Analytica. Congress also grilled Zuckerberg on content moderation—i.e., ...

As the details continue to emerge regarding Facebook's failure to protect its users' data from third-party misuse, a growing chorus is calling for new regulations. Mark Zuckerberg will appear in Washington to answer to Congress next week, and we expect lawmakers and others will be asking not only what...

The State Department has alarmingly declared that it wants to collect social media information from all visa applicants. This appears to be an expansion of a 2017 program that sought social media information only from a subset of initially suspicious visa applicants. This is also the latest effort in a...